Five Long Years
by modestlobster
Summary: Katniss reflects on her recent past, wherein she has finally let go of Gale, but what happened next hasn't turned out to be her Happily Ever After either, and she just doesn't know who else to turn to. Post-Mockingjay, pre-epilogue, somewhat AU.


My name is Katniss Everdeen. I'm 25 years old. At one point I was the Mockingjay. Now I'm just Katniss Everdeen, the girl who isn't sure anymore.

After the war, I pined after Gale Hawthorne for a couple years, like the silly girl I was sure I wouldn't ever be. Visited District 2 more than a few times, even though I knew it wouldn't work, us being anything more than friends. Our personalities were only ever suited for thinking up grand schemes together, they couldn't handle being in the same room forever and ever, 'til death do us part. Besides, I'm not the marrying kind.

Gale needed a yes-woman to make his dreams come true. Preferably someone without (m)any dreams of her own. And he got scores of them. He was quite the charmer, when there wasn't a Capitol to rant about (even though he still enjoyed that pastime, now that we'd won and could rub it into their nonexistent faces without repercussion), and he was intense, always intense, even if it only lasted for a few minutes, until he found a plan, an idea, anything that he liked better.

Yes, so it was only a little bit of a surprise when he married her. Not because it was _her_, but because it was so soon, and a little that he was even going through with it at all. But I guess when your father dies when you're just a boy, it leaves a mark on you, that maybe you won't be around very long in this world either, even if you aren't working in the mines anymore like he did. So, find a girl and marry her, and I guess it will be weird when they start making a family together (that's the only way I can think of it right now, like it's some mechanical process they'll undergo, rather than anything that might involve love or feelings or happiness). But I'll still be here, the friend he talks to when no one else understands his ideas (not even her, which is admittedly less often than I give her credit for) or has the time to, but he wants to figure out whether they're any good or not. You know, worth pursuing.

Gale. Always the hunter.

Which is probably what they say about me, if I ever read the papers, but I don't. No news is good news, though it's hard to avoid. It's not mandatory anymore, but the problem is that they haven't figured out how to report anything in a non-sensational (meaning non-Capitolized) way. It's what people are used to, I guess. That's what sells.

If you haven't been reading the papers for the past few years (and if that's the case, I want to know what rock you've been hiding under and if there's a spare room), then I guess you wouldn't know that I did finally give up on 'my cousin' Gale after an unappetizing trip to D2 where he was being entertained by some mutt-face who was as doe-eyed as she was brainless. (I would have disowned him if he had decided to marry _her_.) And so I went back to D12, ever the wiser, of course, in what I really wanted in love and out of it.

And that's when it happened. When I could finally see that he had been there all that time and was exactly what I wanted. Or needed. Sometimes it's hard to sort those two out. But he knew exactly what I had been through with the Games, and with everything really. I couldn't believe I hadn't seen it before. Sitting right in front of me. Smarter than he looks, stronger than he looks. Much more than meets the eye, especially once you get him into something other than the standard tired, threadbare garments that populate D12 (Cinna's influence on me is still pretty strong at times).

And now it's been 5 years since – well, since the papers first declared "The Mockingjay's Embers Rekindled!" – which was how he found out and I found that I couldn't deny it when he finally asked. That fire of those first couple years transformed us both. Maybe not into better people altogether, but better versions of ourselves. And we found that we balanced each other out and could meet happily, truly happy, in the middle. And things burned steadily for another couple years, different, but love and friendship all the same.

And now we've weathered 5 years, and it's been good, overall. But… But.

I don't know what happened, and maybe it's that nothing happened. But I don't feel like a Victor in his eyes anymore. And I guess the feeling's mutual. I know he's sincere when he tells me he loves me, but I know I'm not, and I don't say it if I don't mean it. Sometimes I mean it still, say it still, because we've spent 5 years together after all. But I'm not in love with him. And I don't really know what to do. Because things are okay, there's nothing to seriously complain about, but the spark went out too long ago, and so we're just tolerating the cold in each other's company.

The District papers haven't caught on though, so I guess none of our friends have either (because _their_ friends are usually the ones that gladly sell the news and rumors away for us). Which makes sense, since I haven't mentioned it to anyone, and so I guess he hasn't been talking about it either. But Panem will be all abuzz when it finally happens. But I don't know how I'm going to do it. Or when. Or where. Or what happens after. I'm not scared though. I've lived through worse, much worse. And I'm not worried if there's love, or nothing, in my future. I always got on pretty well on my own.

I do worry about him a little. But I know he's strong. But still. 5 years. I hope he won't think he should have married me. Because it wouldn't have solved anything. It wouldn't have changed those little things, the acquired negativity that hangs over everything, the persistent practicality that drains the color out of life, the obsessiveness that comes and goes, the things that are part of who he is, that have just worn me down too much of late. And besides, I'm not the marrying kind.

But that's just another one of my excuses. Which admittedly are much easier to think up than actually making the final move, the death-blow that ends it. I can hang on for awhile longer, wait until it actually makes sense. Good, practical sense. The way he would want it. Because I'm not so idealistic to think there's really a green, shiny meadow just waiting for me on the other side of the fence. Even if I can see it. Because I can feel, hear the hum in the air.

No, I have to figure out how to turn off the electricity first, so no one gets hurt. And then, then I can break up with Haymitch Abernathy.

Climb under the fence and then figure out what to do next.

And hope he doesn't go back to the bottle.

Because 5 years of sobriety is no little achievement. But then, he only did it for me.

But he's stronger than he looks. And he cleans up nicely.

And he's a Victor. "_And once a Victor, always a Victor,"_ goes the saying. ("_Unless it's a Quarter Quell,"_ became our retort, whenever we were feeling particularly bitter about it.)

And I loved him once, for all of those things. When part of me was still the girl on fire. And part of him still knew and still cared how to mentor, train, tame that fire. To keep that heat going, not going out.

But those days feel so long ago now. They've become dark once again.

I don't know how Panem will take it, and I realize maybe I do care. Because they are my friends and family out there, the nation. We're nothing if we're not unified in hope. That's what we learned, wasn't it.

Haymitch will survive. Maybe he'll sulk for a while, or drink for a while, or maybe he'll surprise us all and he won't. He'll bounce back and move on, with a clever plan already in the works before the last shoe even drops.

But Panem. I don't know what they'll do. I try not to wonder, but that's when I remember another saying.

"_If you want to know how the Bread will behave, you need only ask the Baker."_


End file.
